What do you mean slightly plausible? Didn't you read the wikipedia link and state department webpage =)

Yes, I'm trying to figure out which policy (Kiwisaver, perhaps?) is being parodied here.

Ahh. You don't know me well enough, is all. Perhaps I was a little early? Posted in a few weeks, I think it would have been somewhat more obvious. I just wanted my argument to lead, rather than follow, the debate to come.

In that case, it stands out to me that the big argument against the case for church tax made here is that the church provides the service as a result of its theological imperatives, hence the quality and range of services is not ideal or representative of what the population might require. The services are not necessarily provided without a catch, or free of propaganda, and they may even do more harm than good because of doctrinal requirements (think abstinence education).

Transferred to the VSM debate, to what extent do student associations have an inherent ideology? In most churches I can't rally my fellow congregants to roll the minister, rewrite the scriptures, or spend the tithes on high alcohol communion whiskey, but student associations are constituted in a democratic and open way.

All organisations embody some sort of ideology, obviously, but I feel the church::student association comparison rather falls down here.

To me the big problem with student associations is that their membership is too transient and immature and these days, too damned busy at assessments and part time work for democratic governance to be secure against determined minorities. The fact that representative functions and service provision functions are united in one body is the historical accident that we should revisit first.

The Catholic Church really got into a pickle when it lost its universatility, including universal church laws and church taxes, in the Reformation, which was really swapping one spiritual overlord and attendant costs for another.Thank God it held on to its MP in parliament, Bill English representing the Vatican for the South Pacific.

Thank God it held on to its MP in parliament, Bill English representing the Vatican for the South Pacific.

Oh, of course -- those fucking Papists. Let them in Parliament (or the White House) and they'll have us all kissing the Pope's ring by nightfall. Really, take a reality check on the company you're keeping the next time you feel like brain-farting that tune. It's not pretty.

In most churches I can't rally my fellow congregants to roll the minister, rewrite the scriptures, or spend the tithes on high alcohol communion whiskey, but student associations are constituted in a democratic and open way.

Most Baptist churches in New Zealand are run democratically (and, to a large extent, independently of each other). Would you support compulsory membership of a Baptist church? You would be able to lobby fellow members of your chosen Baptist church to sack the pastor, commission a new translation of scriptures to suit your ideology, or use tequila for communion (or even baptism). Do your objections to compulsory church membership really fall away if it becomes compulsory membership of a Baptist church of your choice?

@Craig Ranapia: Catholic MPs in our (and other countries') parliaments always face interesting dilemmas. The leader they have pledged allegiance to - remember, Catholicism involves subjugation to the infallibility and the precedence of Vatican diktats over mere domestic profane law - has ordered them to prevent or change laws that allow gay marriage and/or civil unions. Apart from the tragic irony that the biggest homosexual closet in world history is such a staunch defender of the particular lifestyle option of hetero marriage, I am far more disturbed by the fact that many of our elected politicians swear an oath to serve New Zealand, but then follow orders from a foreign power in their legislative voting pattern. Was Harry Duynhoven dumped on for renewing his dual nationality (NZ-Dutch) because - it was presumed? - he would try to introduce liberal Dutch legislation on euthanasia, dope and gay marriage into NZ? So to cut the hypocrisy after the defeat of the Death With Dignity Bill in 2003, I call on all Catholic MPs, including Bill English, the Member of Papal States (South Pacific), to choose which power they serve: the NZ electorate or that foreign prince who only uses his organ to piss.